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← Back to all issuesGranta 163: Best of Young British Novelists 5
Spring 2023
Every ten years, Granta dedicates an issue to the best young British novelists, showcasing the work of twenty writers under forty.
Here we present new work from the authors on the 2023 list, chosen by our panel of judges: Tash Aw, Rachel Cusk, Brian Dillon, Helen Oyeyemi and Sigrid Rausing.
With portraits by Alice Zoo.
Cover image © Donal Sturt, Shiver me timbers., 2019
From this Issue
|Granta 163
The Cloud Factory
Graeme Armstrong
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
|Granta 163
A Certain King
Jennifer Atkins
‘I didn’t think she was happy; I thought she was in love, but I didn’t know what that told me, if it told me anything.’
Fiction by Jennifer Atkins.
|Granta 163
The Hair Baby
Sara Baume
‘She has been ten for a month and she does not like it. She carries the weight of her extra digit like a chain-mail vest.’
Fiction by Sara Baume.
|Granta 163
Universality
Natasha Brown
‘She boils her sentences down to high-sucrose sweeties and calibrates her tone for maximum engagement.’
Fiction by Natasha Brown.
|Granta 163
She’s Always Hungry
Eliza Clark
‘I could hear the sea, and I could hear my own name.’
Fiction by Eliza Clark.
|Granta 163
The Room-Service Waiter
Tom Crewe
‘There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’
A story by Tom Crewe.
|Granta 163
Ivor
Camilla Grudova
‘We were sent to Wakeley Boarding School aged eight for Year Five and stayed on until Year Twenty.’
Fiction by Camilla Grudova.
|Granta 163
A Note in the Margin
Isabella Hammad
‘I register that phrase with pleasure, my brother.’
Isabella Hammad on migration, mentors and disappointment.
|Granta 163
Theories of Care
Sophie Mackintosh
‘The monstrous years of my late teens lay lined up alongside the rest of my life like bullets in a gun.’
A story by Sophie Mackintosh.
|Granta 163
Circles
Anna Metcalfe
‘He was grumpy in a way that I enjoyed. It reassured me that he was easily displeased – he was discerning, I thought.’
Fiction by Anna Metcalfe.
|Granta 163
Kweku
Derek Owusu
‘I don’t remember his face, nor him as a whole.’
Derek Owusu on fathers and family.
|Granta 163
The Termite Queen
Olivia Sudjic
‘It dawned on her, the fact sliding ice-cold into her body; now that she had crossed the border into her forties, Alma herself was no longer eligible for the scheme.’
An excerpt from Olivia Sudjic’s third novel.
